One Satan’s greatest tricks is to make us question our true identities. Another trick that Satan plays is even coyer though, he makes us question the true identities of others. Satan would have us believe that our lives do not depend on one other and that we should be disconnected to one another. Lorzeno Snow taught:

We are of the same Father in the celestial worlds. … If we knew each other as we should, … our sympathies would be excited more than they are at the present time, and there would be a desire on the part of every individual to study in their own minds how they might do their brethren good, how they might alleviate their sorrows and build them up in truth, how [they might] remove the darkness from their minds. Read the rest of this entry »

For this week’s lesson notes I will provide a few comments/questions section by section. Find the link to this weeks lesson here.

From the Life of Lorenzo Snow

The introduction of this lesson discusses Brigham Young establishing the Perpetual Emigrating Fund in 1849. In 2001, the church established The Perpetual Education Fund, which you can read about here.

Although the people had little to give individually, their unified efforts blessed many lives. The Perpetual Emigrating Fund expanded beyond its original purpose, helping more than just the members of the Church who had been in Nauvoo. It continued for 38 years, helping tens of thousands of converts from many lands gather with their fellow Saints.

In what ways is today’s Perpetual Education Fund like Brigham Young’s Perpetual Emigrating Fund? What do these funds teach us about becoming one with one another? Read the rest of this entry »

When speaking about those in need President Smith said, “They are all [God’s] children. They need us; they need not only our moral support and our religious teaching, but they need food and clothing and bedding and help of all kinds because, in many cases, they haven’t anything left.”

The gospel is not just about sitting around a room (or on-line) and talking about doctrine, it is about getting out and doing something. Does this “doing something” save us? No. However, it does show us where our hearts are. “We will discover now whether the love the Savior said should be in our hearts is among us,” President Smith said. I believe that we will discover this when we look inside of ourselves and we are honest about our desire to serve others. We should always be “anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness” (D&C 58:27). Read the rest of this entry »

The subheading of this lesson is “Our efforts to share the gospel are most effective if we love our brothers and sisters and have the companionship of the Holy Ghost.” I think that this is just an awesome sentence and one that I have found to be very true in my own life. Before I begin my notes for this week let me echo everything that I said in my notes for lesson 12. I would encourage you to go back and read those if you have not already done so. In fact, I could almost just copy and paste those thoughts in lieu of these ones because the lessons are so similar to one another. Therefore, rather than simply repeat myself in these notes I will deal exclusively with the “related scriptures” referenced in the lesson. These passages are: John 13:34–35; 2 Timothy 1:7–8; 2 Nephi 33:1; Alma 20:26–27; Doctrine and Covenants 50:13–22. Read the rest of this entry »

The manual starts out with this, “George Albert Smith was well known for his capacity to love others. President J. Reuben Clark Jr., one of his counselors in the First Presidency, said of him: ‘His real name was Love. … He gave his love to everyone he met. He gave his love to all whom he did not meet.’”

Reading this made me think about what it means to love someone. Often young people will ask, “how will I know if I love someone enough to marry them?” This, of course, is a fair question. However, I do not think that the question needs to be confined to marriage. Perhaps we can ask, “how do I know if I love people in general?” And further, “how can I tell if my peers (ward, co-workers, friends, etc.) love me?” The easy answer to these questions is based upon actions. Read the rest of this entry »